Dust Devils
by Mopps
Summary: A collection of mini-fills written for the !kinkmeme. Anything too short to stand alone and set in Cort/Charlie's universe, all only one chapter in length. Updated whenever I write a new one!
1. Outside Looking In

_Original prompt: open ficlet. Anybody, anywhere._

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><p><strong>Arcade<strong> is a noticer. He supposes they all are, in their own way. As As a doctor, his particular speciality lays in noticing why people do the things they do; how and why they hurt. Case in point:

Boone absentmindedly cooks extra food for Charlie whenever he's the one at the campfire. It's clear he hasn't had much in the way of female companionship since meeting her; it's also clear the last of that companionship was a woman who ate for two.

He's positive Charlie knows exactly what's going on. She doesn't voice any complaints, make any comments, just takes the plate and demolishes it, even if she has to stare out over the fire for an extra twenty minutes until something in her gut finally shifts and she can pack the rest of it in. The pair of them can spend days looking like they want to tear each other's throats out, but if it's Boone's turn to do the cooking, no matter what moody snit they're in Charlie's invariably going to end up stuffed to the seams.

Arcade doesn't think the sniper realizes what he's doing, or that the only time he smiles, actually smiles, not a rictus or bared teeth or a contemptuous twist of his lips, is when she sets the plate down clean. The rest of his face can be a thunderous mess, but that little tiny, reflexive little grin will always break out for just a split second when he notices she's finished everything.

He could find Boone's behaviour almost sweet if he hadn't seen the stretchmarks down on Charlie's belly the last time he had to patch her up, so old they're invisible to everything but someone who knows what they are, someone trained to see a body's history. It's why he's positive that Charlie knows what Boone is doing and why she plays along. Why her eyes go dead for the same split-second he smiles. He's filling up a hole in himself by digging the one in her deeper every time, and she lets him. Arcade thinks she'd let Boone dig her hollow, and if he tried to stop it all he would do is make things worse for the pair of them. It's like watching a wound fester, one that's seeped into his own heart.

Sometimes Arcade really wishes he couldn't notice anything at all.


	2. Keep Your Sickness

_Original prompt - Boone having unrequited feelings for the Courier._

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><p><strong>He's<strong> in love with her.

He's in love with her and with that discovery comes a hate so deep it's a wonder he doesn't retch with the sickness of it.

She's the exact opposite of Carla, although maybe that's the problem right there. Carla was soft and clean, with a worldly attitude and a love of bright lights, colours, pretty things, and no sweet clue about just how much of a monster she had ended up marrying. She had made him feel like the man he used to be.

Charlie sleeps in the dirt, possibly believes that electricity is some kind of evil spirit and resembles a board so much he thinks a man would probably need a hammer to nail her. There might be hips and breasts in there under that coat, he'll suppose probably nice ones if he wants to be chivalrous about it, but it's impossible to tell under the leather and the armour and the blades.

Carla had liked sundresses. Strapless.

It had started a few miles out of Novac. One Legion scouting party, one woman heading ahead to act as bait, and one sniper who had repressed his anger so well he hadn't noticed just how much he had to let out when said bait went from luring to ambushing without warning. Charlie was cleaning the blood from her hatchets when he had caught up. She had moved so fast he hadn't even managed to get a shot off.

It had been weeks since he had killed one of the red-swathed bastards, and here was one right at his feet, dead from a combat knife instead of a .308 round, and something in him had exploded like sapwood in a fire. He had descended in a blind fury, ripping the knife free and stabbing at the padded chest until the fabric was indistinguishable from the torn meat. Coming out of that murderous little fugue, feeling the blood on his face and his hands clinging to his skin like filth in the humid morning air, he had braced himself for Charlie's reaction.

She was sitting four feet away, cross-legged in the dirt and finishing off a cactus fruit. Looking over to him, she had licked her fingers clean and tilted her head. "All set?" It had come out like she was asking if he was finished with putting his boots on, not half-butchering someone.

When the Khans had called him a murderer, he knows she had thought they were talking about her. She didn't care when he told her he was one. It made him feel like the man he was.

He also knows that if he made an advance, she'd reciprocate. The only thing Charlie ever needs by way of invitation or encouragement from any man or woman is the right kind of smile and the time; generally all he needs is enough of the latter with a bottle beforehand. It's the only sort of relationship he should be capable of now, and the last thing he wants. It might mean more with someone like her, someone he sees every day, someone who might start looking like a good idea sober. Someone who could end up loving him as he is.

It would ruin everything.

There's a total lack of feeling, an emptiness, a nothing-space between them filling up with dust and dead Legionaries. They could fall into the boiling heart of the Earth through that hole, blazing a trail of death and blood until they both died in that same dust, nameless and rotting under the sky, together with no cares left to have.

She's a woman he wouldn't care about sleeping with, one he doesn't care about hurting or watching others hurt, the perfect replacement for one dead wife who caused him more pain than he thought he could ever bear.

Sometimes he's even happy.

It's this sick, sorry attitude that finally drives it home, makes what he's feeling completely undeniable. He hates himself because of it, he hates himself so, so badly, and if he pretends hard enough, he can make that feeling slop over onto her. He'll bite and tear and _dig_ with it until that folksy corn-pone affability she wears like that damned coat snaps and she cuts back like the real bitch he suspects she is. It's the only thing he can do.

God help him, but he loves her so much.


	3. Bulletproof Soul

_Original prompt - Angsty romance, any flavour, preferably inspired by Bulletproof Soul(Sade)._

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><p><strong>Loving<strong> him should have been enough. It should have been enough, should have taken up the spaces so neatly in that crummy little town, like taking up the hem on the pretty dresses she missed so badly and hates so _much_ right now. She should have been happy. She was so happy the day she met him.

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><p><em>It's yellow and strapless, and she bought it just for this trip, a trip to the fabled New Vegas strip. She laughs at this, this silly, childish rhyme in her head, eyes crinkling up at the corners but not enough to keep her from noticing a buzzed head turning in her direction. She turns back, her purse still full of cash and feeling as saucy as all get-out. 'Well, soldier? Like what you see?'<em>

_It's this happy greeting that probably made his friend Manny think she was a prostitute. He doesn't stick around long and she's happy for that. It's her first day of a new beginning._

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><p>"Profligate scum! You will heed me!"<p>

Carla whips her head up, wincing as the collar she's been slapped into digs at her neck. She hasn't been with the Legion for long, only as long as it took to get to Cottonwood Cove but it was more than enough to make her listen when anyone in red talks, double-quick. The hundreds of heads around her all go up just as fast, or nearly all of them. Somewhere there's a yelp and a scream and the man on the block waits for it to stop, for it to sink in to the rest of them and settle and fester before he goes on.

"This is the first day of the rest of your lives! Prove yourselves to be worthy of Caesar and you may rise to greatness! Prove yourselves worthless and you _will_ die beneath the boots of your betters." He smiles again, a gap-toothed cheery grin, and bawls out like a Brahmin driver. "Haul 'em up! Bids start at twenty Denarius!"

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><p><em>It takes twenty minutes to get Craig Boone to stop calling her Ma'am, or Miss, or anything else but Carla. Longer, if she counted the time before Manny Vargas took off, and thank goodness he did. They're strolling down the strip, looking at the sights, drifting together and apart in a little get-to-know-you dance. 'Your friend was a bit of a pill, huh?'<em>

_He shakes his head a little. 'Manny's good people. Just have to get to know him.'_

_'Well, I think I'd rather get to know you, Craig.' She links her arm through his, and laughs, but not unkindly. He's gone as red as his beret._

_He smiles a little when he regains the ability to talk. 'Everybody calls me Boone.'_

_She smiles back. She'd been looking for someone to sweep her off her feet, a different flavour from the clumsy boys back home, but somehow the idea of her doing the sweeping is getting more and more attractive. Besides, if there's one thing Craig Boone isn't, it's clumsy. 'Well, you think I might be a little bit more special than everybody?'_

_'Might be.' The arm she's holding onto becomes more like an arm and less like a stiff board. 'Say. You want to go catch a show? Got special ones on at the Tops. Nice card tables too.'_

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><p>"Next up, a special offering!" Carla tries not to stumble as she's hauled up the ramp, and doesn't quite manage it. She stands as straight as she can to make up for it when she gets to the block. "A whore to the Bear, taken from under the nose of her profligate dog." He lets the jeers and catcalls fly for a moment. "But not just any dog. Before you, stolen right from his own bed and under his own watch at the wall, we have the gravid toy of a First Recon man!"<p>

The bidders go absolutely wild, both at confirmation of her state and just who had gotten her into it, roaring even louder as the auctioneer yanks her shift back to make her growing belly stand out. She might have lost it at this, because she's not a tough thing like a cactus, she's like the bloom sitting amid the thorns, the thorns of the Bull, but as she looks up for hope, for help in the brown wash of water and cliff around her, she sees something different under a pile of corrugated metal. A tiny glint, way up high. A tiny splash of faded scarlet just a little bit higher.

Watching her do this, the auctioneer leans in. "He's not coming to save you. Accept your life in service now and save yourself. You may even get to keep your whelp."

Carla glances around for a brief moment at the crowd, seething with red and white and gold. It's all blurring now, like poker chips scattered over faded baize on an old, brand new day. She was sure of him at the end of it then, and she's sure of him at the end of it now. "No. My husband won't come for me."

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><p><em>'So that's how a blind works? It sounds so exciting!' She leans in close, smiling over her drink. They've been together all day and still it seems the only way she can get him to fill up one side of a conversation is to talk about guns, but somehow it's not so bad. At the very least, now she knows how snipers work. 'Tell me again about the sound travelling, Craig.'<em>

_He smiles back, shy and half-drunk and fully lost. 'A good sniper can get two shots off before the target even hears the report.'_

_She leans in. 'And you're a good sniper.'_

_He leans back, and there's nothing bashful about his return smile this time. 'Yes Ma'am.'_

_'So I'll never even know what hit me?' She leans in the last inch and gets lost right along with him. Her brand new day has ended up so nice. His breath is so soft in her ear._

_'Baby, I'm the last thing you'll _ever_ see.'_

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><p>Carla looks up, towards the horizon, smiling towards the dark star shining in the sunlight for her. "He won't come for me. But he'll come for y-"<p> 


	4. Windows

_Continuation of 'Outside Looking In', sortof. Fillathon drabble for the !kinkmeme._

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><p><strong>It's<strong> gotten easier for Arcade to tolerate the things he sees as there's more to see, as perverse as that sounds.

Raul has to be just about the most lonely, depressed, guilt-ridden person he's ever seen, and he's seen _Boone_. Past that, it's nearly impossible to read the ghoul through the sarcasm and dry wit, or to tell when, if ever, he's being serious because of it. The only thing Arcade is sure of about the man is the fact that he's obliquely but very genuinely fond of both Charlie and Cass. He'll still insult the hell out of both of them with an unending supply of backhanded compliments, but there's something fraternal about it, something that makes both women tolerant. Charlie acts completely oblivious, taking them as genuine, and Cass gives back as good as she gets.

Cass is frustrated beyond belief; at life, her lot in it, the state of the world. She's also possibly the most honest, well-adjusted person out of the whole bunch of them. What you see is what you get, unmixed and unadulterated, just like an unopened bottle of booze. It's rather refreshing, having someone around who wears their heart out plain, just like the little pendant around her neck.

And then there's Charlie. Charlie, the Courier, who can kill someone with a tiny, unseen slice of a blade and who's currently lapping grease off her dinner plate like a dog.

Charlie is a mystery. Too much of one. It doesn't look like she's holding things back; she talks as plain as Cass does, her opinions flowing just as free. Probably freer than they should on some occasions, but that twangy voice and affable 'aw, shucks, can't you see I'm just a slow hick of a gal' attitude puts most people off their guard. It's a sham, and he knows it; he saw it when he realized she'd suckered him and he's seen the truth of that knowledge reaffirmed whenever she gets genuinely upset. It's the only time that mask she has on slips.

She wears it just like that battered old coat and the only flashes he gets of the person inside it are just like the ones he gets of who that person is. Sharp, hidden things that have been worried over until they shine like mirrors and then wrapped up tight. Things that would be very, very bad for everyone if they came out uncontrolled.

But they don't.

The shininess she does pull out is precisely what whoever around her wants to see in her. Cass has a drinking buddy. Boone has a surrogate target ior/i partner, Charlie's temperament changing to meet whatever his maladjusted needs are for the day. Raul has someone to look after. He himself found someone who needed him for his mind, even if she's turned out to be a hell of a lot more intelligent than she let on to begin with. He still wonders if that dumb act was for his benefit or hers.

He wonders if any of this is for her benefit, if she's planned out this collecting of people for a clandestine or higher purpose, or if it's just some kind of damaged social compulsion she's responding to, another side-effect of those bullets to her brain. Like gravitates towards like, or loss towards loss, and she displays the appropriate lure to whoever catches her eye. But then maybe he's full of shit and they're really the ones who have collected her.

He wonders why. The real why of it all.

That's something he just can't see, no matter how hard he tries.


	5. Hat Trick

_This is another prequel for Charlie, set some time before Rosolare la Donna, which is posted under its own title._

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><p><strong>"Honey<strong>, I'm home!"

"High-lo, Bea."

"Hello, Dutch."

"_Hah_lo."

Dutch scowls, letting out something unflattering in a mix of garbled Norwegian mixed with one or three of the romance languages after her second attempt at the greeting, and Bea grins. She's been teaching the tribal English for a month now, ever since they settled into the bunker the ghoul currently calls home, and while progress has been fast in retaining individual words, pronunciation and putting them together is moving like dried chicken shit on a hot tin roof. It's not the girl's fault; Bea's voice is just too raspy. If she doesn't do something soon, poor Dutch will end up with a speech impediment along with the hideous accent. Bea jiggles the box, which became her planned solution for this problem right after she had the good fortune to find it. "That's my girl Friday. Since you've been good, I picked you up something."

"Not Friday, Bea. Dutch."

"That's right, kitten, you went dutch with me on killing those bastards who had you. Now come get your present."

"Am present. Right heear, Bea." Dutch sidles closer, and peers into the box, which is filled with smaller, colourfully printed boxes. "Whaat?"

"I decided it was high time to introduce you to the wonders of the silver screen."

It's a hoot and a half to watch Dutch in front of the television; in front of any working modern convenience, really. She approaches it with a cross between fascination and outright aggression, and a very large stick. Literally. It's probably a testament to her stolid nature that it hasn't gone through anything yet, although now there's a fresh little mound of dirt out in the yard, and the alarm clock radio is suspiciously absent from her bedside table. Bea answers a few questions about what films are for, a few more about why people would be stupid enough to pay for stories since their elders should be telling them all for free, and leaves her to it.

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><p><strong>The <strong>first thing Dutch pays attention to are the women in them, looking for something she can recognize in herself. They are pathetic things, for the most part; tied in too much cloth and screeching. The ones wearing next to nothing, however; they are bold, and fierce, and seem to like laying with men very much. It isn't hard for her to choose which sort she wants to emulate in the world outside.

The rest of the films are filled with tribes and armies, those like her and those who destroyed her, but in the middle, there are those that walk the nothing space of between. There are the riders, the rustlers, the scouts and the bandits. They are old and young, crippled and whole. Everyone likes them or not, clean-cut lines of behaviour, and they answer to no-one at all.

She particularly likes the ones with no name, and the ones in the black hats.

Dutch plays the films over and over again, until she can mimic every line of dialogue, until she knows what every word really means and how to use them outside of her obsessive parrotry. When her companion returns home again, she decides she is ready.

Dutch pokes her head out of the living room as soon as she hears the ghoulette come in. She calls out in a smooth, clear, and ridiculously twangy voice. "Bea! I need you to go into town for me!"

"Shit on toast, I turned you into the Duke." Bea claps a hand on her face. Dutch frowns.

"No, Bea. _Dutch_. You goin' soft in the sun?"

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><p><strong>Bea<strong> humours her requests for specific clothing, wondering if she's created a kitschy monster as she digs through several dilapidated barns, bunkhouses and the lone costume shop in town, then decides if Dutch ever does decide to go off the deep end and kill her, it'd probably be more comfortable going out by B-movie cowboy than something that looks like a cross between an Amazon and a mutated canary. She brings them back in a heavy bundle, bemused as Dutch dips her head in gratitude and then pecks her on the cheek for good measure before disappearing into her room with them, slamming the door behind her.

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><p><strong>The <strong>worn remains of hide and handwoven cloth come loose from her, and new jeans and chaps and a soft cotton shirt go back on. Tattered feathers fly as she brushes out her hair. It takes an hour to braid it up the same way as her favourite leading lady did, before the shrewish church-women shore it clean from her head. It takes slightly longer to sit the empty gun belts low on her hips to her satisfaction, just as her favourite leading man does. She will have to break them apart to fit her hatchets as soon as possible, but for now they will do.

She pulls the boots on, carefully testing out how to walk with the low heels, shrugs into the leather duster and finally dons her new hat, sliding her finger and thumb over the edge of the wide brim and back again. It came fresh out of a round box, and is still as black as pitch. She turns, watches the long coat flare out, then stands side-on to admire herself, one arm akimbo. She looks nothing like the woman who was. Dutch smiles, and it's an empty, soulless thing.

Yes, she likes having no name, except for the ones others give her. It means that who she was is dying, dead, dust in the past no one knows, will make the ones who cannot guess at her or it wary. And she likes having the black hat, because somewhere, somehow, someone always gives the black hat exactly what's coming to them.

It's as good a way as any to ensure she gets her end.


	6. No Vacancy

_To my regular readers: there's a note in my profile for anyone wondering about updates to IPSF. Thanks, and enjoy!_

_Original Prompt: Five Times fic. Five Times Boone's Fought With Charlie._

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><p><strong>"Boo<strong>-"

Charlie presses her forehead against the peeling motel door and starts coughing, her hat brim folding in over her face. Mornings have always been the worst when she's sick, and as unique as the cause is this time, apparently her body's sticking with the same old routine. Everything settles in nice and tight overnight, all cozy in the cooler air, but five minutes after the sun comes up and starts heating things it's checkout time.

She digs her nails in where she had planned on knocking before her lungs decided to turn inside out and just hacks and wheezes until her body can't do anything but twitch and give up and drag in another breath.

Pulling in air isn't much better. It feels like she's trying to deep throat a straight razor. Unable to stand the tickle any longer, Charlie rears back and sneezes, a hard _'ka-CHOW!' _that rocks her on her heels.

She waits for a moment, has to, then wipes some of the clotted red mist off the door and rubs it between her fingers. It's either blood from her innards or leftovers from the Cloud.

"Probably both." She croaks, and leans down to grab a handful of dust from the stoop, rubbing it onto the stain with her soiled hand until it's all just nice, tidy, unassuming mud instead of blood, or toxic waste, or whatever the hell those little chunks were she just messed up his door with. "Boone. C'mon, it's sunshiny time. I'm back."

Charlie waits for another minute, two, then decides he's either out of it or ignoring her, and either way she doesn't have a scrap of politeness or patience left to deal with it. She's tired, so very tired, and while Boone is a cranky sonofabitch, one that by all accounts left Forlorn Hope without her after barely a day of waiting, he's a slightly familiar one that she thinks will at least have her back instead of trying to drive a super-heated knife into it and all she wants to do right now is simply spend some time being close to-

She stands there poleaxed for a second, decides to add a heap big side of lonely to the fatigue, then gives a disgusted huff and sets to work.

It's a short matter of a held breath and a bobby pin to get the door open. Boone's radio is back out it in about half that amount of time, landing on the stoop with a staticky clunk. Mr. New Vegas is subsumed under a swath of white noise.

Well, Boone's not in, but she is, and now very reluctant to change that state of affairs, so she decides she might as well learn something while she searches for her nerves. Any insight into the taciturn young man would be a bloody godsend.

Charlie looks around avidly, taking in the finely made wardrobe and bed, which is not made at all and probably hasn't been for a long time judging by the dingy grey the linen has turned, scrubs her boot over the pretty rug on the floor that has dents dug into it from a missing dining set that was obviously larger than the crapsack diner one off to the side with its single cracked chair, and finally fixes her eyes on the bloodied knife on the floor and the old stains arcing out around it. His, or some Legionary Carla was lucky enough to tag? Charlie suspects it to be the latter; Boone has no noticable scars, and the short time she's been around him has been long enough to teach her that while not the brightest blossom on the cactus, he is far too skilled at killing to miss a target that damn close.

That puzzle speculated on to satisfaction, she focuses on other things.

Enough of her nose still works to tell her the wardrobe next to her smells like mesquite and flowers, some store-bought scent that's slowly being snuffed out by time and heat. The rest of the room reeks of cheap gutrot, rancid beans, and the sour punk of sweat and sickness. It's surprisingly thick for a place that has next to nothing left in it.

She's wondering if she should head on up into Dinky's mouth; if Boone's anywhere around, green-eyed Manny Vargas whould know about it, obsessive bugger that he is, when the missing sniper in question shoves his bathroom door open with a sharp *_whang_!*

Boone stops his forward charge and stares at the trim next to his face, stares at the quivering switchblade now buried in it with the same foul blandness he directs at nearly everything else, and then turns to regard Charlie. "Get out."

"Uh." She darts her eyes towards the squawking radio in the doorway, and keeps them there. His beret and sunglasses are off, and being able to see his eyes for once is alarmingly disconcerting under the circumstances.

"Get out."

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><p><strong>Hearing<strong> someone crash about in his room, Boone had hoped it was his fate finally come to meet him. Seeing that it wasn't was just another disappointment. Who it is instead makes it an especially harsh one.

He puts his own combat knife away. "Get. Out."

Charlie keeps staring at the doorway where his radio sits spitting static instead of the station it's been carefully left on for months, and he clenches his hands up into fists. Not even two weeks on the road with her and she had vanished, the person who had a plan, who was supposed to help set him on his last path to redemption, a path with a point, a direction, a purpose. Not even a stinking _month_ and he was back in this hellish limbo of a room, tied to it like a Brahmin waiting for slaughter and she's the first person in this room since _she_ was taken, and the smell of her, the rotten smell of her, some dry chemical bitterness that clings to the back of his nose is eating away the last sweet traces of lilies.

"Get out _now_."

Charlie jerks, still not moving, still not looking him in the face like everyone else in this shitty little town, and his temper goes even higher.

"GET THE FUCK OUT!"

She starts edging towards the window instead of the door, still refusing to meet his eyes again, and Boone snaps. It's the only time in his life he'll get the drop on Charlie in a close-quarters fight.

He slams into her so hard her hat flies clean off, preceeding them out the door like a frisbee. It's a good six feet before they both crash down again, Charlie twisting and shrieking as they tumble up with his busted radio, a high, wild sound of panic that doesn't stop until she grabs it up and brings it down with a crash on his head.

His bell rung like it's Easter Sunday, Boone gets in two or three more half-hearted punches before he's airborne, one arm jammed up behind his back. Ranger Andy is jerking him around like a ragdoll.

"Son, just what the hell do you think you're doing to this lady? Look at her! Knocked the wind and the inside of her mouth just about clean out!"

Boone jerks his head down as far as he's able. Charlie's crumpled up in the dirt coughing her guts out, her ragged braid dark against the shock of her paled skin. The anger in him runs out slightly, replaced by puzzlement. However hard he was hitting her, however berserk he was while he did it, he knows it wasn't _that _hard.

"Ranger, no. S'my fault. W-wo-ho-" She whoops and shudders, and just about flings the next words out into the dirt between her hands, a spray of red going with them. "Wokehimoutta_nightmare_. Bad nightmare. Bad. Bitter S-ss-sp-"

She doesn't get the last word out, but it's still magic enough to make Andy let him go. He doesn't say anything, which Boone is beyond grateful for; the old ranger just nods his head once and helps him move Charlie over to the shade of the motel's overhang.

Boone can still remember enough about caring for someone else to pretend like he does and takes a short trip in and out of his room, coming back with a bottle of water and a handkerchief which he hands off to Charlie. He can't bring himself to do more, but what little he's done is enough to placate the old Ranger. Andy nods again as he gives his parting words, keeping one hell of a weather eye on Boone.

"Not that it's any of my business, but it's nice to see you moving on a bit. Be careful now."

Charlie's face goes comically blank as he limps off.

Boone stands there for a while with much the same expression on his own, dealing with a few latent surges of anger and mortification, wishing she had never come back, wishing she had never left him, wishing that he just had his damn beret and glasses to hide behind. He leans down towards his doorway and snatches up her hat instead, holding it out as he straightens. Charlie stares up at him warily for a moment, the bottle and cloth still clutched in her other hand, then slowly pulls his spare beret from one of her voluminous pockets.

Boone shakes his head. "That one's yours. You ditched."

She tucks the beret away again and fumbles her hat back on. "Didn't mean to."

"What happened."

"The Sierra Madre happened." Charlie shifts restlessly as he stares at her, waiting for the punchline to that joke of an answer, then jabs her left arm toward him so fast it nearly makes him start another fistfight. "I don't have the breath to spell it all out, so go on and do it yourself."

Boone eyes her, then sits down alongside and turns his attention to the Pip-Boy, briefly poking at a few buttons until he's figured the simple little computer out. He plays the recordings, flips through the terminal entries it collected, the instructions that were programmed into it, his eyebrows occasionally ticcing up a fraction. Charlie watches him read with a sad, wistful longing that he pretends not to notice. Finishing up after a number of minutes, he puts the screen back to where she had it in the first place and straightens up.

"Explain things well enough?"

The information on her Pip-Boy did explain enough, but not everything. Not why she's furtively edged at least half a foot closer to him in the last five minutes. "Yeah. Elijah sounds like a real sonofabitch."

"Well, now he's a real fucking _dead _sonofa-" Charlie starts coughing again, a dry, barking hack, and the bitter chemical smell coming off her increases to an alarming degree. Boone patiently waits for the fit to stop, talking over it when it doesn't.

"Need to get you to a doctor."

"Only one I know-" She shudders in a deeper breath and pays for it. Boone waits a little while longer. "Gods _damn_ it. Only one I know close by is in Goodsprings."

"Richards?"

"Didn't ask. Forlorn Hope's got enough problems without me adding to the load." Charlie crumples into herself and closes her eyes. Her lids are almost purplish, and the dark circles beneath them are so big the combination makes her face look like a skull. "I just bought up all the Buffout he could sell me and came straight here."

"Have any left?"

"Nuh-uh."

"When's the last time you slept?"

"Does being gassed the previous week count?" Her head droops lower, and she shudders, inching closer. "If you slept outside, you'd never get up again, and inside, I just couldn't. I didn't dare. The fucking place might've moved me again if I did."

"Shit." Boone thinks for a moment. Ada Straus is in town, so buying more pills will be easy, but he might as well finish beating Charlie to death as bring her to that quack for actual doctoring. With how sick she is, the result would be the same. Trying with another NCR medic wouldn't work either. He got a good look at the stats screen on her Pip-Boy while he was flipping around, and while the extent of his medical knowlege pretty much consists of being able to tell his ass from his elbows, that's enough for him to know that the condition she's in is a bad one. A strapped army doc could probably do nothing more than what she's done herself.

Goodsprings is also out. 164 and the I-15 are too much of a mess, and the overland route is a rocky snarl of terrain and living nastiness that Charlie would have no chance of getting through. That leaves only one place to go. "There's Followers outside of Vegas. We'll head there."

"Let's get one to go then. We've both still got work to do." She doesn't move to get up, and stays quiet long enough for him to wonder if she's nodded off. "Boone?"

"Yeah?"

"Did you look for me?"

He's fairly insulted until he recalls that he neither asked for help nor told anyone where he was going before leaving Forlorn Hope to try and pick up a trail he now knows didn't exist. "Yeah."

"Oh. Good." Charlie tilts her head all the way down, until her hat brim hides every scrap of her face. "I'm sorry about your radio."

Boone sighs. "Just drink your damn water, Charlie."


	7. Dead Rabbits

_Second part of the Five Times fill started with No Vacancy. Follows slightly after Down in Mexico. Thanks for the reviews!_

* * *

><p><strong>Charlie <strong>stumbles back into the Lucky 38 just as twilight settles in on the Strip, riding on the kind of downward slope the bender he's currently going up on will most assuredly produce the next day. She wanders over to the elevator, does a double-take of her surroundings when she gets there, and vaguely reverses course, eventually washing up on the bar next to him. A waft of considerably nicer alcohol than what he's currently imbibing comes with her.

Boone keeps staring into his glass as she hangs her duster off the back of her chair, removes her hat and gloves, then places a stained deck of cards down on the polished wood and carefully starts to lay them out. He thinks she might be setting up a game of Solitaire. "Charlie."

"Boone."

"Evening."

"Seen Raul?"

"No."

Charlie stops playing and rests her head on her hands, leaves it there for a long moment and then snaps it back up, dragging the cards together so fast that some of them bend in half. "Any of that hooch you're drinking left?"

"Like you need more."

Charlie cants an eyebrow at him, sounding testy as she puts the deck away. "Like you need it at all."

Boone decides he is not in the mood for her sourness; whatever snit she's gotten herself into doesn't match his current hell. It's a bad day. A birthday. One that will never happen for the woman it belongs to. The present for it is still tucked away, hidden where she would never think to look and destined to sit there until everything around it rots into dust. "The fuck you know about what I need."

"Well, why don't you _tell _me, then."

The answer pours loose before he can think it might be a good idea to stop it. "I want Carla, for one more night. _This _night. I want my baby in my arms. Deliver _that_." He digs around in a pocket and slams a handful of NCR scrip onto the bar. "There. That's what you _need_, isn't it?"

Charlie picks the sheaf of bills up, eyes it, then firmly tucks it all back into his hand, her face inscrutable. "I'm not that kind of Courier. Carla's gone. You can't bring back what's dead, Boone, only make something new."

Oh, this is _definitely_ not the sort of discussion he should be having in this state; probably one that he shouldn't have at all, but he can't help himself. The sad thing is, Charlie might be the only person who could understand exactly why he finds it so unfair. Why _she's_ so unfair. "_You're_ back. Why the fuck should it be you, come out of the dirt like an undead joke. Some barren, illiterate _bitch _can come back, so why not my heart-" Boone suddenly finds himself staring up from the floor, Charlie's busted knuckles matching his busted lip.

"You are one melancholic, _mean_ little sonofabitch when you're drunk, you know that?"

He stares up at her dumbly, the viciousness in his voice traded for a sullen petulance. "You hit me." Joining this revelation is the feeling that he has finally made Charlie genuinely angry with him, almost uncontrollably so. Hand still cocked and her jaw clenched tight, she's breathing so hard the air is practically roaring out of her as she glares down at him. Boone decides there is some small satisfaction to be found in that, at least.

"If I didn't think I'd punch your lung in with a rib, there'd be a kick joining it." She turns to head for the elevator.

"You hit like a girl." It isn't bright, but it is the best he can come up with, unless he _really _wants to- "Should read up on it and improve yourself. Wait, right, scratch that."

That does it. Face livid, she spins, shoots one sprung boot out and nails him square, right in the soft meat of his side, knocking all his air out in a woosh. Everything in his stomach nearly joins it as her heel comes down sharp in his gut on the return.

"Right, there enough _bitch_ in _that_ one for you?" Charlie pauses long enough to wrap her kerchief around her bleeding hand, strips anything resembling a weapon from him, wrenching one of his ears in a twist when he tries to object, stuffs the contents of one of the cash registers into his pockets and leaves him lying on the floor. "I'll be _damned_ if I allow you to make me your penance for the evening. I'll let you punish yourself, instead. Victor, throw him the hell out. Don't let him back in 'til he's broke and sober. Don't let him leave the Strip, either. He causes any real shit, haul him down to the NCR Embassy and make him their problem."

"Well, alrighty, pardner!"

Victor grabs his arms and starts dragging. Boone lets him. He deserves to be thrown out like trash.

* * *

><p><strong>Somehow<strong>, drunkenly wandering around with his last handful of cash after the last casino throws him out, he ends up with a prostitute. At least he thinks she is, since the money disappears, but then he may have lost it somewhere on the way from the dark corner he had been dropping trou to piss in to the other he has ended up fucking her in. Nice girls didn't spread their legs for washed up NCR grunts, at least without the money going in barter for booze and chips, and she isn't local. She's soft, and smooth, her hair and skin scented with things he has only encountered back west, the same kind of perfumes and soaps Carla had loved and could never afford to get after her small supply ran out. Now he has it all at his fingertips, and no one to buy it for, to give it to. All the comforts of home, including home-grown whores, courtesy of an east-bound caravan.

Had he found her, or had she found him? He's too drunk to remember, so drunk he shouldn't even be standing anymore. God, but she smells like her. It's too dark to see each other behind what he thinks is the monorail station, she's keeping her mouth shut, and it is so easy to pretend. The perfect company to build up a broken fantasy on, really; amorous, anonymous and nearly guilt-free. She would never find him in the daylight, he could blame everything he did with her on the drink. It is not a pretty thing, he thinks as things fade out into the dim, but then neither is his guilt.

* * *

><p><strong>He<strong> wakes up behind the Ultra-Luxe, when the sun is just high enough to shine over the wall and feel like a knife to the eyes. "Damn. Thought I passed out under cover."

"You did, idjit." Boone jerks, immediately regretting it, then again when a boot gently pushes down on his neck. "Lay still before your brains end up out your ears. You're lucky they didn't end up on somebody's plate, sacking out here. Apparently you're stupid as shit when you're loaded, along with being nasty."

Not quite ready to recognize something as complex as a voice yet, particularly not with so many words involved, he only relaxes when another extremely familiar set of scents washes over him, the parts of his brain responsible for processing it apparently primitive enough to cope through the hangover. Clean sweat, dirty leather, and warm, oiled metal. He takes in a deep breath, filling his head up on the tangy reek until the person it belongs to floats to the front of his head, clearing out those last sweet remnants from the dead of night that always seem to turn so bitterly ugly once the sun comes up. This time, he wasn't sure if it was an improvement. "Charlie."

"Ding ding." The light pressure on his neck lifts, and the swirling mess of light and shadow resolves itself into a figure standing over him. "Stars and sky, I leave you alone for a few hours and look what happens."

He sits up, moving with infinite care. The first thing he notices are the drag marks trailing out from a set of legs, then the fact that he is the owner of those particular limbs. "I _did _lay down in cover."

"Told you. I decided to make your morning start bright and cheery. Filling it with as much suffering as possible was also part of my grand plan." He stands up, something making a clinking noise as he does. Charlie frowns, plucks his beret up, and switches to a wide grin as a little sprinkle of caps and poker chips rains out down over his face. "Well, leastways it's not marbles. Thought you never took this thing off for anything."

"Only one thing."

"Aha. I remember. We can get you a purse, you know. They sell 'em up the Strip, plain jane ones, and ones with tassels an' sparklies and everything. Veronica'd probably help you pick one out."

"Shut up, Charlie."

She gives him a oddly blank look that could either pass for suppressed hilarity or disappointment. "Could pick one up for that long drink of water you drowned yourself in last night."

"Shut _up_." He snatches his beret back and snugs it down. "What the fuck were you doing, spying on me?"

"As much as being a voyeur of your escapades would no doubt thrill me, no, I was not spying. I came back down to find you, couldn't, looked, did."

"How many times?" Boone carefully keeps his voice neutral. Considering the circumstances, he's not sure whether to be annoyed or comforted she bothered to check up after Victor tossed him onto the tarmac.

"Twice. I'm not sure what your worst mistake was, putting yourself in a spot where you could catch something nasty or be caught by someone nastier, although I suppose I'm one to talk." Charlie stares at him for a moment longer, then shakes her head and starts walking away, not looking back to see if he follows. He supposes the staggering noises are evidence enough, considering how she starts speeding up.

"Sorry."

"Oh _fuck_ off, Boone. You don't know just how damn sorry you _should _be." Charlie stops, sighs heavily, and starts walking again, but at a much slower pace. "Come on and hurry up. Arcade can probably sort your head out, if he's inclined. If he's not, I'll talk him into it." She sighs again. "Honestly, the shit I do for you."


	8. Sick it Up

_This started as a fill based on a prompt where Arcade was sick and the Courier had to heal him up, and kept going until it morphed into another 'Five times' fill. Here's the prologue to "Five times Charlie told Arcade a Story"._

* * *

><p><strong>He's<strong> lying outside El Dorado Gas and Service, one pant leg slit to the crotch, his thigh so swollen it looks like he's starting to turn mutant, and the rest of him burning up like it's noon instead of barely dawn. Charlie's dragged him here out of the hills, and while it's not the best place to stop, it's the only one she could get him to. She may match him for height, but he still outweighs her by too wide a margin to go any further.

"You know this is down right hilarious."

"Shut up."

"Mister Medicine himself getting all low and bug-ridden."

Arcade shivers, his teeth rattling. "This is clearly an anaphylactic reaction. I am not, as you so quaintly put it, bug-ridden."

"Tell that to the Cazador that humped you."

"You're the one that took me there."

Charlie replies to him mildly. "You're the one that agreed to go."

He tilts his head up far enough to glare at her back, or the one of three he thinks might actually be it. "I hate you."

Crouched next to the campfire, Charlie spits out what she was chewing on into a can, turns, and grins a shit-eating grin. "Do not. Otherwise you would've patched yourself up instead of me." He starts shivering again, shaking so hard his heels drum a bit onto the dusty pile of cardboard bedding he's been dumped on, and she's over in an instant, shucking out of her duster and draping it over him.

"Oh, this isn't good, is it."

"How could you tell, doc. What with the fever and puking and swelling and all."

"Not that. You're being nice. The end is clearly nigh."

She plants one hand against her breast, a look of shock on her face that holds very little sincerity and an awful lot of bullshit. "How _dare_ you. I am _always _a picture of genteel civility and manners."

"Right." Charlie grins again and ambles back over to the campfire, settling down on her haunches and stuffing another chunk of what looks like xander root into her mouth. It's hard to tell through the blurry halo that seems to be surrounding everything. She starts humming some nameless tune, and the sound of it added to the noisy chewing is like a knife between his eyes. "Will you stop snacking and get me a Stimpak already?"

"Someone's testy." She spits again and smacks loudly, taking a spoon out of her pocket. "Ain't any left after you shot me up and I got no syringes to make more, so we'll have to take care of that leg the old fashioned way."

"If you come near me with a bone saw, I'm going to gnaw you off at the ankles." Arcade lets his head drop. "And stop spitting that out. It's better if you swallow."

"You tell that to all the girls?"

"I hate you _so much_."

Charlie laughs and starts stirring.

* * *

><p><strong>"That<strong>. Is. Disgusting." Arcade stares down at the huge wad of Charlie-cud slathered over his thigh. The application of it had been soothing, a warm wet balm, until he looked down and the remaining cells in his brain that weren't too addled by fever to add had put two and two together. There were broc petals mixed in with the pulped xander root. It looks like a Giddyup Buttercup has taken a candy-coated shit on his leg.

Charlie sighs and holds out another tin can. "That is going to let you keep that scrawny white pin of yours. Now drink this." He does, quick and testily, and she presses an arm across his shoulders as the purgative burns down and then back up like a trail of flamer fuel, her other hand clapped down hard on his mouth. "Don't you dare sick that up, now. Was a pain to make and it'll be a hell of a lot worse coming out your nose than going down your throat was, and don't think I won't scoop it up and force it right back down your birdy little gullet."

She lets go as soon as he stops spasming, looking at him with more satisfaction than sympathy, and Arcade glares at her, wheezing. "This is not old-fashioned. This is cruel and inhumane torture."

Charlie snorts. "This is what happens when you have to go and complicate things!"

"Me? _You're_ the one that just had to go traipsing off to the end of apocalyptic nowhere!"

"And did _I_ spill half the godsdamned antivenom in a prissy little slapfight?"

"I had to get it into _you_, you raunchy reprobate!"

"I DIDN'T _NEED _THE FUCKING SHIT! SOME TINPLATE SAWBONES RIPPED MY H-H-" Charlie chokes up, throat working to get the next word out. She barks a _'huh!'_ noise, wild hope clashing with the rage on her face for the briefest of moments, then dips her head and clenches her fists against her chest, arms stiff as she thumps at it. "Empty. "

Arcade isn't sure what's just happened; he thinks it might be something important, but he's too sick to sort the mental wheat from the chaff. All that filters through is the fact that the last part of this heated exchange has been rather alarming, and he can't find the will to deal with it. "Say. Let's go back to where we were five minutes ago, when I was gagging and you weren't being scary. Good idea? Good idea."

She twitches. "I think maybe it's a good idea to tell you how I feel."

"And now you're terrifying me."

Charlie spits out an incoherent oath and slaps the good cheer back on her face and voice like it was never gone. "Problem is, you're just a wilty little city boy. Cass would've loved that."

"Cass could snort Abraxo and drink a turpentine chaser." He closes his eyes. "Now what."

"What now? We wait, is what. Don't tell me you don't know how a poultice works."

"When I work it, it involves less spit."

"You must chafe like a sonofabitch, then."

"I am not scrawny."

"No." Her regard turns lecherous. "You're maybe sorta kinda something, though."

Arcade groans. "Making me wish for death is counter-productive."

"Better than pining away for a love you'll never have?" Charlie bats her eyes.

"Better than suffocation by cheese."


	9. Dregs

**She's** already drunk and it helps to make what she's going to do a little easier, even though she knows in her heart of hearts that what that is won't really help at all.

Charlie wanders into the bowels of Gomorrah slightly after dawn, one hand clutching a deck of soiled cards and the other wrapped around the neck of a mostly drained bottle, beelining for the first male ghoul she sees. "You speak Spanish?"

"No, but I can hum a few-"

She's moving away before the first word has entirely left his mouth, not quite staggering but not quite walking true, making her way to the next. It's a near thing, but she manages not to collapse onto the table he's sat at with a few more employees of various persuasions. "You. You speak Spanish?"

He raises a patchy eyebrow. "_Hola, panocha_."

"Good. You want one hell of a tip, keep that up and nothing else. I don't care what it is, just. Just keep talking."

To her immense displeasure, he carries on in English. "You're a pretty little _nina_, but I think you are also a very drunk one." The comfortingly familiar accent drops off like a stone, the polite smile going along with it. "Come back when you've got blood in your boozestream."

"But I'm such a friendly drunk." Charlie holds up the bottle. "Say yes and I'll pay double, plus the rest of this is yours."

"I'm not..." He trails off, squints at the bottle, and something like awe breaks out on his face. "Wait, is that tequila? _Real_ tequila?"

"Yes." She swallows hard. "And if there's more, I'm not telling you where it's buried. Now take me somewhere good and quiet, and let's get down to business."

He takes a moment to glance over at the others at the table, and then shrugs, turning back to her. "It's your dime." He leads her across the floor and into one of the private rooms, nudging the door shut. "So how do you want-"

She's on him like a nightstalker the instant the latch clicks home. He doesn't have much on and she doesn't need much off, and it's a matter of seconds to get everything ready. She sobs out a name that isn't his as he hilts in her down to the root.

It's hard, dirty, quick and grasping, foreign words blending in and over her grunts and curses like a counterpoint to some needy, brutal melody, so short it's more like a scream than a song.

He stretches as she climbs off and tugs her midsection to rights, feeling an unprofessional spurt of curiosity. "So who did I just stand in for, _chica_?"

Her eyes meet his, mud-brown and about as inviting as parched hardpan. "I paid you to fuck me, not ask questions."

"Fair enough."

He's halfway through a shrug when she picks him up in a hug that isn't quite a stranglehold, and it seems like forever before she drops him, along with a handful of poker chips, a wad of scrip, and the ancient bottle of booze. Whatever life was left in her eyes has clotted up in her throat. She croaks out her parting words over her shoulder as she leaves. "Thanks for the shake and roll."

"Don't thank me." He sighs after she shuts the door, leisurely sipping at the last of her tequila. "I don't think I did you any favours."


End file.
